ts by alkali deposits, girded round by steep-walled
mountain ranges. Cacti grew there, and huge tufts of Spanish
bayonets.

John Ringo's pony jogged on and on; the fine dust rose from its hoofs,
surrounding animal and rider like a moving wraith of fog, settling
down upon their sweating skins in a whitish-gray film which stung like
fire. Before them the mirage wavered like an enormous, vague tapestry
stirring in a breeze.

But of breeze there was none, nor was there any sign of water save
that phantom of a lake--dead now for ages--which kept its distance
always ahead. And the sun climbed higher; its scourgings grew ever
fiercer.

Scourged also by thoughts and memories which he had never revealed to
men--save only as he had hinted at them on that other afternoon to
Breckenbridge--the bad man drank the lukewarm whisky as he rode. And
the liquor did its work until when he had gone two hours from the foot
of the pass he realized that it was overcoming him.

He drew rein, dismounted, and sought the shade of a clump of
soto-bushes. But before he flung himself upon the baking sands he took
off his boots and, tying their tops together, hung them over his
saddle-horn. The pony he turned loose with the reins down cow-boy
fashion. After which he yielded to the whisky and knew no more.

The sun was still glaring in the cloudless sky when he came back to
his senses; and the torture of that thirst which comes after heavy
drinking was upon him. He got to his feet. The pony had gone.
Afterward the searchers tracked the animal to the Sulphur Springs
ranch, where it had come with the boots hanging to the saddle-horn.

John Ringo was alone, a speck in the middle of the shimmering plain,
and there was no water for miles. He started walking eastward toward
the pass which leads over into the San Simon. The cactus did its work;
the alkali sands scalded his bleeding feet; he took off his shirt,
tore it into strips and bound them round his ankles for footgear; and
when the strips were cut through he used his undershirt, until finally
he walked barefooted and the blood-drops showed beside his tracks.

Toward the end the same blindness which comes to thirst-maddened
cattle seized upon him. When they found him he was within a stone's
throw of water and the sound of the stream must have been in his ears,
for his footprints showed where he had circled and zigzagged, striving
to reach the spot whence that limpid murmuring came. Among the
cart